Ted Cruz

In an interview with Telemundo, Texas Republican Senate candidate Ted Cruz stressed that it’s “incredibly important” for Republicans to do a better job of communicating with Hispanic community.

“I think that Hispanic community is a profoundly conservative community,” he said. “If you look at the values that resonate in our community, they are faith, family. They are patriotism, hard work, individual responsibility, the American dream. Those are all conservative values and I think Republican party is working hard and it needs to do a better job communicating.”

Fernand Amandi, executive vice president of Bendixen and Amandi, disagrees with Cruz. “According to current polling, Tea Party’s platform is outside of the mainstream, where the Hispanic voters are,” explained Amandi, whose firm works with the Obama for America campaign.

When asked if that meant that Cruz was likely to get less of a Latino vote due to being a conservative and a Tea Party candidate, Amandi said that we have yet to see a Tea Party candidate who could carry a Latino vote.

Lydia Camarillo, vice president of Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, also described Cruz as a “favorite of the Tea Party,” who is “very conservative,” and predicted that he will “vote against the interest of the Latinos” in some cases.

During the Telemundo interview, Cruz said that if Mitt Romney is elected, he should overturn President Barack Obama’s executive action that temporarily prevents deportations of children brought into the U.S. illegally by their parents.

“I think it is without authority, and we’re a nation of rule of law, and it is not defending anyone’s freedom to be undermining rule of law,” he said.

“I don’t think the Hispanic community is behind the efforts for amnesty,” continued Cruz. “I think on immigration, I actually think the policy is quite simple. I think we should do everything possible to secure the borders, and at the same time we should remain a nation that doesn’t just welcome, but celebrates legal immigrants.”

A Princeton University jurisprudence professor Robert P. George, who was Cruz’s college adviser, said that Cruz and Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio are success stories of first generation Americans. “Latino [voters] will be proud of them,” he said. “Ted and Marco are proof that it’s still true – that you can become an American and an American leader even if your parents came here yesterday.”